Wednesday, April 12, 2017

The Fate of the Furious Review (2017)

There are three great sequences in F Gary Gray's “The Fate of the
Furious,” (the eight installment of the “Fast and the Furious” franchise) a
couple of which are strong set ups for movies in their own right.

The first is the movie’s opening sequence, set in the
streets of Havana, Cuba, wherein Dom (Vin Diesel) challenges a random heavy
Raldo (Celestino Cornielle) to a street race to defend his cousin’s and new wife
Letty’s (Michelle Rodriguez) honor. It’s simple and well choreographed, and it
even involves Dom driving an old beat up car that eventually catches on fire.
The second sequence involves sometime government agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson)
and mercenary Deckard (Jason Statham) in a German prison, who make trading
insults into an art form. Seriously, I could watch these tough guys bicker back
and fourth for hours. The sequence eventually culminates in an outrageous
prison riot/melee fight. And the third sequence involves Deckard, his brother
Owen (Luke Evans) and a third person who will remain unnamed so as not to spoil
the fun or the plot. Lets just say a very famous British actress makes a
delightful cameo. All three of these sequences are intimate and character
driven, while also providing giddy action movie thrills.

I wish I could say these sequences were enough to make a good
movie but that’s not the case. “The Fate of the Furious” can be awfully fun, thanks
mostly to its lovable, vibrant band of silly characters. However, it can also
feel excruciatingly dull and redundant. A lot of this has to do with the way
the franchise has evolved. At around the fifth installment (“Fast Five”) these
movies slowly turned from straightforward action flicks about illegal drag
racing, gangsters and heists, into big dumb action cartoons involving physics
defying action set pieces and global espionage. Dom, Letty and Hobbs, along
with fellow crewmembers Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) became super
spies, saving the world from terrorists and having fun doing it.

While the global espionage angle felt fresh in the sixth
film and was tolerable in the seventh it now feels stale and uninspired. Super
hacker/terrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron, elegantly cunning and soft spoken)
has stolen the launch codes for Russian nukes that she plans to set off,
thereby plunging the world into chaos. That’s it. That’s her motivation. I know...
bland, right? How many more movies involving nuclear weapons theft and the
threat of world annihilation are we going to have to endure? On top of that, we
get scene after scene of characters in high tech control rooms rapidly typing
on computers, spouting technical mumbo jumbo that makes your mind wander and
lots of hacking into various GPS/surveillance systems. Between the “Bourne”
franchise and the countless other cyber action movies that have come out of
late, this stuff is beyond played out.

Even the big finale, wherein the Fast crew infiltrates a
Russian military base, can’t help but feel overwrought and disingenuous. These
guys are ex criminals, car experts and government spies but now they can also
take over a heavily armed, well-guarded military base like Seal Team 6? The
sequence is preposterous even for this franchise. Worse, it feels desperate, as
if the filmmakers are saying: “we know this espionage plot is super generic but
watch the crew get chased by a giant nuclear submarine across the ice!”

The other major problem with “Fate of the Furious” has to do
with the franchises focus on the importance of family. As outlandish as these
movies have become, the theme of family and loyalty is the one element that’s
taken very seriously, that grounds
these flicks in reality. Over the course of the last four films this crew has gradually
developed into a tightknit and ever-growing family-- a family that gets
together for potluck dinners after they save the world. This aspect can be
cheesy at times but it can also be endearing. Outside of the ridiculous action,
the genuine bond that has developed between these characters (and the witty
chemistry between the cast) is the main reason why we keep watching.

The global espionage plot in “Fate” is set into motion when
Cipher turns Dom against “the family.” This is an intriguing hook but ultimately
the reasoning behind his betrayal is lazy and contrived, pushing the other
established family members to the sidelines and introducing a new character
that we’re supposed to be automatically attached to. The emotional stakes are
low and Dom’s familial dilemma is undercooked.

Additionally, Dom doesn’t get to have much fun this time
around—the majority of his scenes being extremely morose and static. In these
moments, “Fate” is a full-fledged drama, a mediocre drama at that. The film’s
attempts at serious philosophical discourse between Dom and Cipher are simply
idiotic and done without a shred of irony. These scenes might have worked if a
better actor played Dom but Diesel simply doesn’t have the dramatic chops to go
toe to toe with the great Theron. He recites his lines in a low affected
grumble, talking slowly, savoring each word and phrase with zero awareness of
how melodramatic he is.

In the end, the combination of a generic convoluted
espionage plot and half-baked family drama sinks “The Fate of the Furious,”
overshadowing the strength of the cast and those three sequences.